Handel | Page 3

was only natural that he should wish his son to enter on life with better
advantages than he himself had enjoyed. He at any rate followed the
advice of the Duke so far as to place the boy under the musical tuition
of Friedrich Zachow, the organist of the Lutheran church at Halle.
The next episode in George Frederic's career has considerably puzzled
his biographers. Mainwaring asserts that in 1698 he went to Berlin,

where he was presented to the Electress Sophia Charlotte and made the
acquaintance of Ariosti and Giovanni Battista Buononcini, two famous
Italian opera composers whom he was to encounter again, in London,
many years later. But it is known that Ariosti did not arrive in Berlin
until the spring of 1697, and Buononcini not until 1702. And as old
Handel died in February 1697, his son cannot have been in Berlin later
than about the end of 1696, if it is true (as Mainwaring says) that the
Elector offered to send him to Italy, an offer which the father firmly
refused to accept for him. If, on the other hand, Mainwaring is right in
saying that young Handel went to Berlin with a view to obtaining a
musical post there, it is hardly likely that he should have made the
journey at ten years of age, and while his father was still living. It
seems much more probable that if he ever did visit Berlin it was when
he was of an age to form his own judgments as to his future career.
Three days before his seventeenth birthday he matriculated as a law
student of the University of Halle, but music must have been the chief
occupation of his time. The composer Telemann, four years his senior,
spoke of him as being already a musician of importance at Halle when
he first met him there, probably in 1700. In March 1702 he was
appointed organist at the Cathedral, although he belonged to the
Lutheran Church, whereas the Cathedral was Calvinist; considerable
scandal had been caused by the intemperance of the Cathedral organist,
one Leporin, who was finally dismissed. That Handel should have been
given the post at so early an age points to his ability and
trustworthiness of character; it also suggests that efficient organists
were rare among the Calvinist musicians.
Mainwaring unjustly credited Zachow with Leporin's love of a cheerful
glass, and other biographers have perhaps for this reason greatly
underrated Zachow's musicianship. Zachow cannot indeed be classed
as a great composer, but he was considerably more than merely a sound
average teacher. For one thing, he possessed a large library of music.
Handel was not only made to master the arts of counterpoint and fugue,
but he was also set to study the works of other composers, and to train
his sense of style by writing music in direct imitation of them. In those
days there was no possibility of buying all sorts of music ready printed.

Printing was expensive, and generally clumsy in execution as well;
most music was copied by hand, and a musician who wished to acquire
a library of music generally did so by borrowing it and copying it.
Zachow employed Handel to copy music for him, and no doubt he
copied a great deal for himself. Although the opportunities for hearing
music would not be very liberal in a town like Halle, Handel, under
Zachow, became a well-read musician as well as an accomplished one.
During the seventeenth century the chief contribution of Germany to
the art of music was religious, just as the German hymns were her chief
contribution to poetry. In Italy, on the other hand, sacred music was of
minor importance as compared with the development of opera. But in
all music Italy led the way, and German sacred music was constantly
influenced by the Italians, with the result that Italian dramatic methods
were often used by German composers of sacred music, not with any
loss of seriousness and dignity to its character, but rather to the intenser
expression of that deep personal religious feeling which characterised
both the poetry and the music of the Protestant nations.
Zachow was well acquainted with the Italian masters, and his own
Church music shows a vivid dramatic sense; it is easy to see how much
Handel learned from him. But although Church cantatas and organ
music may have sufficed for the majority of the innumerable worthy
German musicians of those days, the form of music which excited the
curiosity and interest of the livelier spirits was certainly opera. By 1700,
opera had established itself all over Italy, supported mainly by the great
princes, but at Venice maintained on a commercial basis by the citizens
themselves since 1637. The first attempt at a German opera was made
by Heinrich Schütz, at